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Between Babel and Beast
(America and Empires in Biblical Perspective)
The Glory of Kings: A Festschrift for James B. Jordan
Fyodor Dostoevsky
(Christian Encounters Series)
Athanasius
(Foundations of Theological Exegesis and Christian Spirituality)
The Four: A Survey of the Gospels
Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom
From Behind the Veil: The Epistles of John
Deep Exegesis:The Mystery of Reading Scripture
1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary
The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter
A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons
Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature
Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen
The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism
A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel
From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution
Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy
Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper
A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament
Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature
Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays
Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life
The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church
David Warren examines Edward Said‘s Orientalism and the more recent Occidentalism by Ian Buruma“and Avishai Margalit in the April issue of Commentary. His critique of Said is devastating and he also finds the Buruma/Margalit volume unsatisfying, but the most interesting bit in the piece comes near the end, when he cites a recent book by Lee Harris, Civilization and Its Enemies. Harris’s book examines, in part, the thought of “the 14th-century Muslim historian ibn Khaldun, the inventor and perhaps greatest master of the disciple we now call sociology. Ibn Khaldun‘s Muqaddimah, or ‘Prolegomena’ to the study of history, was an unprecedented effort to comprehend the causes of the rise, persistence, and decline of human civilizations.”
Ibn Khaldun traced the fall of civilizations to forgetfulness: “As Harris exaplins, this could be defined as the ‘tendency of civilized men to take for granted the complex and peculiar historical conditions that permitted them to behave as civilized men.’ It is a collective amnesia, a forgetting of who we are, and of how we came to be, and therefore of what we must do to continue being.”
One is reminded, among many other things, of the insistent emphasis of the Torah on preserving memory ?Ethe exhortations to memory in Deuteronomy, the regular calendar of commemorative festivals, the demand that parents transmit Israel’s memories to their children.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, April 4, 2004 at 11:04 pm
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